I can't even with this one

[lady_*nix]

Basically all the content warnings on this. We have
- Rape
- Racism
- Colonialism
- Child sexual abuse
- Sex trafficking
- Child trafficking
- Literally using human beings as livestock
- Christian hypocrisy
- Republican politics

https://twitter.com/originalspin/status ... 2809213952
https://twitter.com/originalspin/status ... 6229656576

I'm... so angry I feel numb TBH. This Petersen guy deserves death if anyone does.

[Sigma_Orionis]

An elected official from Maricopa County in Arizona. Well, imagine that.

[SciFiFisher]

I have lots of words. And a few suggestions. Of course, he will probably even win re-election. Because it's better to vote for a criminal than it is to vote for a Democrat or a Liberal.

[lady_*nix]

@Sigma

Oh right, someone elsewhere mentioned that was Joe Arpaio's county. Isn't it amazing how the most judgmental, sanctimonious, self-righteous motherfuckers always turn out to be a bunch of creeps?

[Rommie]

The older I've gotten, the more I've decided the "why would you ever have your own kids when there are so many kids in the world who need to be adopted?" crowd can stop being so damn judgmental.

Are there kids who need adoptions and loving homes? For sure. I know many, and I know many adoptive parents. But there are so many kids who really don't so much as their parents need a support system to raise their kids that they don't have to offer (or just access to birth control in the first place), and so many kids obtained under dubious circumstances because as your article shows bad people will exploit that market. I'm sure they justify it somewhat to themselves by thinking "I'm giving that kid a better home than they'd have!"... implying love can be bought? Weird the more you think about it.

If anyone's interested in reading up on this at all, check out Palimpsest- it's a graphic novel I picked up a few months ago, which is the memoir of a woman who was adopted by Swedish parents from South Korea. What struck me about it was how open she was with her emotions- she loved her adoptive parents and had a great childhood, but all the adoption stories were written by adoptive parents and didn't really cover what she felt. Then the emotional implications of learning that she was probably a trafficked child for Western adoption... I think it's very telling that while I knew many kids back in the day adopted from China or Russia etc, those channels don't really exist anymore for my friends looking at the route now. It turns out even the most above board adoption countries have serious ethical implications.

Once again, I'm not trying to diss all adoption by any means. But I do think there were a lot of ethical implications never considered, and now that I've seen friends grow up and struggle with some implications we never heard of when younger, it's made me wonder about some parts of it. Hope that makes sense.

[lady_*nix]

@Rommie

Yeah, that's all super valid.

There's also an extensive history of white parents adopting non-white children and then being abusive shits. Ethiopia full-on banned adoptions by foreign families back in 2018 in part because of this. It's really fucked up TBH; a lot of white people who adopt come in with zero knowledge of systematic racism and zero intent to learn, and wind up basically viewing their children as fancy pets. Plus the whole creepy colonial aspect of white people adopting children from exploited countries and raising them as "good Christians" and shit like that.

Basically the more I've learned about the adoption industry in the US, the more I've been happy to just never have children.

[Rommie]

I think a lot of it just stems from the view we were raised in in the 90s, which was "racism is over, I don't see color!" type stuff- as in, if you adopt a kid of different ethnicity and treat them as your own, why would there be any issues? But yes, obviously there are people who weren't even that scrupulous in terms of their motivations, for whatever reasons.

It's a tough issue because wanting children is a very basic urge, and not being able to have them is a loss. But does that loss justify all the cases where the kid actually has biological parents who would love to have the child, but can't afford them? (Like, Madonna adopting kids from Malawi who legit had parents but were too poor to raise them, so sent them to an orphanage- WTF Madonna.)

Then not adoption but related- when traveling, I learned it was pretty common for Western tourists to go to an orphanage and "volunteer" for a day in places like Cambodia... and most of those kids are actually trafficked from poor villages, and get poor to no schooling and are deliberately kept in rags/ not fed enough, so the founders of the orphanage can get Western donations. I remember tourists being shocked after the fact to learn that they were helping people exploit children- but dude, in what universe could you go into a school with at-risk kids in a Western country with no background check, and play with the kids all day? Sigh.

[lady_*nix]

@Rommie

Yeah, the 90s "racism is over" thing is definitely a huge part of it.

Then not adoption but related- when traveling, I learned it was pretty common for Western tourists to go to an orphanage and "volunteer" for a day in places like Cambodia... and most of those kids are actually trafficked from poor villages, and get poor to no schooling and are deliberately kept in rags/ not fed enough, so the founders of the orphanage can get Western donations. I remember tourists being shocked after the fact to learn that they were helping people exploit children- but dude, in what universe could you go into a school with at-risk kids in a Western country with no background check, and play with the kids all day? Sigh.

For stuff like this I have a twist on Clarke's Third Law: "Sufficiently willful ignorance is indistinguishable from evil."

[SciFiFisher]

@Rommie

Yeah, the 90s "racism is over" thing is definitely a huge part of it.

Then not adoption but related- when traveling, I learned it was pretty common for Western tourists to go to an orphanage and "volunteer" for a day in places like Cambodia... and most of those kids are actually trafficked from poor villages, and get poor to no schooling and are deliberately kept in rags/ not fed enough, so the founders of the orphanage can get Western donations. I remember tourists being shocked after the fact to learn that they were helping people exploit children- but dude, in what universe could you go into a school with at-risk kids in a Western country with no background check, and play with the kids all day? Sigh.

For stuff like this I have a twist on Clarke's Third Law: "Sufficiently willful ignorance is indistinguishable from evil."

I am of the same thought process when it comes to willful ignorance. It's one thing if you can't learn. But, if you can learn and you refuse to learn then you are no better than someone who deliberately commits acts of evil.